Near the centre of that verdant triangle formed by Saint
Cloud, Versailles, and Saint Germain lies the village of
Marly-le-Roy, high up on a slope above the lazy Seine - an
entrancing corner of the earth, much affected formerly by
French crowned heads, and by the "Sun King" in particular, who
in his old age grew tired of Versailles and built here one of
his many villas (the rival in its day of the Trianons), and
proceeded to amuse himself therein with the same solemnity
which had already made vice at Versailles more boresome than
virtue elsewhere.

Two centuries and four revolutions have swept away all trace
of this kingly caprice and the art treasures it contained.
Alone, the marble horses of Coustou, transported later to the
Champs Elysees, remain to attest the splendor of the past.

The quaint village of Marly, clustered around its church,
stands, however - with the faculty that insignificant things
have of remaining unchanged - as it did when the most polished
court of Europe rode through it to and from the hunt. On the
outskirts of this village are now two forged and gilded
gateways through which the passer-by can catch a glimpse of
trim avenues, fountains, and well-kept lawns.

There seems a certain poetical justice in the fact that
Alexandre Dumas fils and Victorien Sardou, the two giants of
modern drama, should have divided between them the inheritance
of Louis XIV., its greatest patron. One of the gates is
closed and moss-grown. Its owner lies in Pere-la-Chaise. At
the other I ring, and am soon walking up the famous avenue
bordered by colossal sphinxes presented to Sardou by the late
Khedive. The big stone brutes, connected in one's mind with
heat and sandy wastes, look oddly out of place here in this
green wilderness - a bite, as it were, out of the forest
which, under different names, lies like a mantle over the
country-side.

Five minutes later I am being shown through a suite of antique
salons, in the last of which sits the great playwright. How
striking the likeness is to Voltaire, - the same delicate
face, lit by a half cordial, half mocking smile; the same
fragile body and indomitable spirit. The illusion is enhanced
by our surroundings, for the mellow splendor of the room where
we stand might have served as a background for the Sage of
Ferney.

Wherever one looks, works of eighteenth-century art meet the
eye. The walls are hung with Gobelin tapestries that fairly
take one's breath away, so exquisite is their design and their
preservation. They represent a marble colonnade, each column
of which is wreathed with flowers and connected to its
neighbor with garlands.

Between them are bits of delicate landscape, with here and
there a group of figures dancing or picnicking in the shadow
of tall trees or under fantastical porticos. The furniture of
the room is no less marvellous than its hangings. One turns
from a harpsichord of vernis-martin to the clock, a relic from
Louis XIV.'s bedroom in Versailles; on to the bric-a-brac of
old Saxe or Sevres in admiring wonder. My host drifts into
his showman manner, irresistibly comic in this writer.

The pleasures of the collector are apparently divided into
three phases, without counting the rapture of the hunt.
First, the delight a true amateur takes in living among rare
and beautiful things. Second, the satisfaction of showing
one's treasures to less fortunate mortals, and last, but
perhaps keenest of all, the pride which comes from the fact
that one has been clever enough to acquire objects which other
people want, at prices below their market value. Sardou
evidently enjoys these three sensations vividly. That he
lives with and loves his possessions is evident, and the smile
with which he calls your attention to one piece after another,
and mentions what they cost him, attests that the two other
joys are not unknown to him. He is old enough to remember the
golden age when really good things were to be picked up for
modest sums, before every parvenu considered it necessary to
turn his house into a museum, and factories existed for the
production of "antiques" to be sold to innocent amateurs.

In calling attention to a set of carved and gilded furniture,
covered in Beauvais tapestry, such as sold recently in Paris
at the Valencay sale - Talleyrand collection - for sixty
thousand dollars, Sardou mentions with a laugh that he got his
fifteen pieces for fifteen hundred dollars, the year after the
war, from an old chateau back of Cannes! One unique piece of
tapestry had cost him less than one-tenth of that sum. He
discovered it in a peasant's stable under a two-foot layer of
straw and earth, where it had probably been hidden a hundred
years before by its owner, and then all record of it lost by
his descendants.

The mention of Cannes sets Sardou off on another train of
thought. His family for three generations have lived there.
Before that they were Sardinian fishermen. His great-
grandfather, he imagines, was driven by some tempest to the
shore near Cannes and settled where he found himself. Hence
the name! For in the patois of Provencal France an inhabitant
of Sardinia is still called un Sardou.

The sun is off the front of the house by this time, so we
migrate to a shady corner of the lawn for our aperitif, the
inevitable vermouth or "bitters" which Frenchmen take at five
o'clock. Here another surprise awaits the visitor, who has
not realized, perhaps, to what high ground the crawling local
train has brought him. At our feet, far below the lawn and
shade trees that encircle the chateau, lies the Seine,
twisting away toward Saint Germain, whose terrace and
dismantled palace stand outlined against the sky. To our
right is the plain of Saint Denis, the cathedral in its midst
looking like an opera-glass on a green table. Further still
to the right, as one turns the corner of the terrace, lies
Paris, a white line on the horizon, broken by the mass of the
Arc de Triomphe, the roof of the Opera, and the Eiffel Tower,
resplendent in a fresh coat of yellow lacquer!

The ground where we stand was occupied by the feudal castle of
Les Sires de Marly; although all traces of that stronghold
disappeared centuries ago, the present owner of the land
points out with pride that the extraordinary beauty of the
trees around his house is owing to the fact that their roots
reach deep down to the rich loam collected during centuries in
the castle's moat.

The little chateau itself, built during the reign of Louis
XIV. for the Grand-Veneur of the forest of Marly, is intensely
French in type, - a long, low building on a stone terrace,
with no trace of ornament about its white facade or on its
slanting roof. Inside, all the rooms are "front,"
communicating with each other en suite, and open into a
corridor running the length of the building at the back,
which, in turn, opens on a stone court. Two lateral wings at
right angles to the main building form the sides of this
courtyard, and contain les communs, the kitchen, laundry,
servants' rooms, and the other annexes of a large
establishment. This arrangement for a summer house is for
some reason neglected by our American architects. I can
recall only one home in America built on this plan. It is
Giraud Foster's beautiful villa at Lenox. You may visit five
hundred French chateaux and not find one that differs
materially from this plan. The American idea seems on the
contrary to be a square house with a room in each corner, and
all the servants' quarters stowed away in a basement. Cottage
and palace go on reproducing that foolish and inconvenient
arrangement indefinitely.

After an hour's chat over our drinks, during host has rippled
on from one subject to another with the lightness of touch of
a born talker, we get on to the subject of the grounds, and
his plans for their improvement.

Good luck has placed in Sardou's hands an old map of the
gardens as they existed in the time of Louis XV., and several
prints of the chateau dating from about the same epoch have
found their way into his portfolios. The grounds are, under
his care, slowly resuming the appearance of former days. Old
avenues reopen, statues reappear on the disused pedestals,
fountains play again, and clipped hedges once more line out
the terraced walks.

In order to explain how complete this work will be in time,
Sardou hurries me off to inspect another part of his
collection. Down past the stables, in an unused corner of the
grounds, long sheds have been erected, under which is stored
the debris of a dozen palaces, an assortment of eighteenth-
century art that could not be duplicated even in France.

One shed shelters an entire semicircle of treillage, pure
Louis XV., an exquisite example of a lost art. Columns,
domes, panels, are packed away in straw awaiting resurrection
in some corner hereafter to be chosen. A dozen seats in rose-
colored marble from Fontainebleau are huddled together near by
in company with a row of gigantic marble masques brought
originally from Italy to decorate Fouquet's fountains at his
chateau of Vaux in the short day of its glory. Just how this
latter find is to be utilized their owner has not yet decided.
The problem, however, to judge from his manner, is as
important to the great playwright as the plot of his next
drama.

That the blood of an antiquarian runs in Sardou's veins is
evident in the subdued excitement with which he shows you his
possessions - statues from Versailles, forged gates and
balconies from Saint Cloud, the carved and gilded wood-work
for a dozen rooms culled from the four corners of France.
Like the true dramatist, he has, however, kept his finest
effect for the last. In the centre of a circular rose garden
near by stands, alone in its beauty, a column from the facade
of the Tuileries, as perfect from base to flower-crowned
capital as when Philibert Delorme's workmen laid down their
tools.

Years ago Sardou befriended a young stone mason, who through
this timely aid prospered, and, becoming later a rich builder,
received in 1882 from the city of Paris the contract to tear
down the burned ruins of the Tuileries. While inspecting the
palace before beginning the work of demolition, he discovered
one column that had by a curious chance escaped both the
flames of the Commune and the patriotic ardor of 1793, which
effaced all royal emblems from church and palace alike.
Remembering his benefactor's love for antiquities with
historical associations, the grateful contractor appeared one
day at Marly with this column on a dray, and insisted on
erecting it where it now stands, pointing out to Sardou with
pride the crowned "H," of Henri Quatre, and the entwined "M.
M." of Marie de Medicis, topped by the Florentine lily in the
flutings of the shaft and on the capital.

A question of mine on Sardou's manner of working led to our
abandoning the gardens and mounting to the top floor of the
chateau, where his enormous library and collection of prints
are stored in a series of little rooms or alcoves, lighted
from the top and opening on a corridor which runs the length
of the building. In each room stands a writing-table and a
chair; around the walls from floor to ceiling and in huge
portfolios are arranged his books and engravings according to
their subject. The Empire alcove, for instance, contains
nothing but publications and pictures relating to that epoch.
Roman and Greek history have their alcoves, as have mediaeval
history and the reigns of the different Louis. Nothing could
well be conceived more conducive to study than this
arrangement, and it makes one realize how honest was the
master's reply when asked what was his favorite amusement.
"Work!" answered the author.

Our conversation, as was fated, soon turned to the enormous
success of Robespierre in London - a triumph that even
Sardou's many brilliant victories had not yet equalled.

It is characteristic of the French disposition that neither
the author nor any member of his family could summon courage
to undertake the prodigious journey from Paris to London in
order to see the first performance. Even Sardou's business
agent, M. Roget, did not get further than Calais, where his
courage gave out. "The sea was so terrible!" Both those
gentlemen, however, took it quite as a matter of course that
Sardou's American agent should make a three-thousand-mile
journey to be present at the first night.

The fact that the French author resisted Sir Henry Irving's
pressing invitations to visit him in no way indicates a lack
of interest in the success of the play. I had just arrived
from London, and so had to go into every detail of the
performance, a rather delicate task, as I had been discouraged
with the acting of both Miss Terry and Irving, who have
neither of them the age, voice, nor temperament to represent
either the revolutionary tyrant or the woman he betrayed. As
the staging had been excellent, I enlarged on that side of the
subject, but when pressed into a corner by the author, had to
acknowledge that in the scene where Robespierre, alone at
midnight in the Conciergerie, sees the phantoms of his victims
advance from the surrounding shadows and form a menacing
circle around him, Irving had used his poor voice with so
little skill that there was little left for the splendid
climax, when, in trying to escape from his ghastly visitors,
Robespierre finds himself face to face with Marie Antoinette,
and with a wild cry, half of horror, half of remorse, falls
back insensible.

In spite of previous good resolutions, I must have given the
author the impression that Sir Henry spoke too loud at the
beginning of this scene and was in consequence inadequate at
the end.

"What!" cried Sardou. "He raised his voice in that act! Why,
it's a scene to be played with the soft pedal down! This is
the way it should be done!" Dropping into a chair in the
middle of the room my host began miming the gestures and
expression of Robespierre as the phantoms (which, after all,
are but the figments of an over-wrought brain) gather around
him. Gradually he slipped to the floor, hiding his face with
his upraised elbow, whispering and sobbing, but never raising
his voice until, staggering toward the portal to escape, he
meets the Queen face to face. Then the whole force of his
voice came out in one awful cry that fairly froze the blood in
my veins!

"What a teacher you would make!" instinctively rose to my lips
as he ended.

With a careless laugh, Sardou resumed his shabby velvet cap,
which had fallen to the floor, and answered: "Oh, it's
nothing! I only wanted to prove to you that the scene was not
a fatiguing one for the voice if played properly. I'm no
actor and could not teach, but any one ought to know enough
not to shout in that scene!"

This with some bitterness, as news had arrived that Irving's
voice had given out the night before, and he had been replaced
by his half-baked son in the title role, a change hardly
calculated to increase either the box-office receipts or the
success of the new drama.

Certain ominous shadows which, like Robespierre's visions, had
been for some time gathering in the corners of the room warned
me that the hour had come for my trip back to Paris.
Declining reluctantly an invitation to take potluck with my
host, I was soon in the Avenue of the Sphinx again. As we
strolled along, talking of the past and its charm, a couple of
men passed us, carrying a piece of furniture rolled in
burlaps.

"Another acquisition?" I asked. "What epoch has tempted you
this time?"

"I'm sorry you won't stop and inspect it," answered Sardou
with a twinkle in his eye. "It's something I bought yesterday
for my bedroom. An armchair! Pure Loubet!"